The one actor Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles agreed might be the greatest of all time
Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles are inarguably two of the greatest directors in cinema history, not to mention a pair of the most innovative and influential. With that in mind, if they agreed that one actor deserved to be called the best of all time, then that person was clearly a damned good actor.
The calculating mind behind a string of seminal classics, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket, wasn’t known for talking too highly of any performers, not even the ones he worked with. He wasn’t quite Alfred Hitchcock, but praise was often a hard thing to come by from Kubrick.
Welles, meanwhile, appeared to hate everything. The older he got, the more outspoken he became, and with his career coasting on fumes and barely surviving a number of half-finished and abandoned productions, he found himself reduced to taking paycheque gigs and reflecting on former glories, although his reputation as a trailblazer had been firmly intact since the 1940s.
Whether it was mounting Broadway productions in his early 20s, terrorising listeners with his unforgettable War of the Worlds adaptation for the radio, or introducing himself to the silver screen with Citizen Kane, almost certainly the single most impressive feature debut ever made, his legend was secured.
Kubrick overcame the early adversity of hating his own first film to push the narrative, artistic, and stylistic boundaries of the medium, making them a pair of indelible powerhouses. Despite their shared favourite actor being alive and active during their respective rises to the top, neither of them got the chance to work with him, but, if anything, that only made them more overawed by the majesty of James Cagney.
Steven Spielberg recalled a conversation he had with Kubrick about The Shining, which saw Kubrick ask him to name the five greatest actors of all time, before immediately invalidating it: “I quickly went, ‘Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Clark Gable’. He stopped and said, ‘OK, where was James Cagney on this list?’ I thought, ‘He’s up there, high’. He said, ‘Ah, but he’s not in the top five. You don’t consider James Cagney one of the best actors around? You see, I do.'”
Welles, who was more likely to be found lambasting his peers than making them the subject of hagiography, shared that, in his view, “Cagney was maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of the camera,” largely because he “broke every rule about movie acting” and ushered in a new era of performance that was less indebted to the stage and more attuned to the screen.
They’re not alone, with Cagney basically your favourite actor’s favourite actor’s favourite actor, since everyone from Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman to Robert Redford and John Travolta have called him one of, if not the single most significant thespian the business has ever seen.
As for Cagney himself, he wasn’t the type to embrace such deification, and he placed his money on Spencer Tracy being the pinnacle of the profession.
